


Purple Is For Power

by hellpenguin



Category: Smallville
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-04-20
Updated: 2007-04-20
Packaged: 2017-10-08 03:38:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/72314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellpenguin/pseuds/hellpenguin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clark leaves bruises like roadmaps on Lex's body, and Lex connects the dots and reminisces.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Purple Is For Power

**Author's Note:**

> My first Clex fanfic.

Lex Luthor used his bruises like a pornographic scrapbook.

  
After a long, luxurious hot shower, Lex stepped from his shower stall and paused at his ghostly reflection in the steamed-up mirror. He wiped clear a section and let his eyes roam over the trail of bruises in his pale skin.

They stood out like polka dots, alternating from the fresh purple to the now-fading ancient yellow. He smiled a little, like it was a gruesome connect-the-dots game, like a secret map, and he grazed his water-puckered fingertips around a yellowish-purple mottled mark on his collarbone, the perfect size of a thumbprint. He pressed gently, ever-so gently, and the dull twinge of pain brought back the memory, flooding his mouth like fine wine...:  
_  
The loft, and they had a pointless little argument. Lex forgets what about. But he remembers, oh how he remembers, the press of the wall on his back and Clark's hands around his shoulders like iron manacles, lifting him, shoving him...  
_  
Lex gives a little shudder and lets his hand drop to his side, opens his eyes. He finds his face in the mirror and smiles at that half-lidded look he wore. He traces from that bruise to the fresher, darker eggplant bruises where his hip meets his thigh, twin bruises, where once two hands ground out their apology into the sheets. Lex leans back onto the cold marble pillar and lets the memory take him...  
_  
Last Saturday, in Clark's farmboy-chic room, his parents vacationing in Metropolis. He stutters, apologizing, he acted so irrationally in the Loft, but Lex doesn't need to hear. Words are like air, they mean nothing._

"Show me," Lex had whispered in Clark's ear.

And Clark showed him how much he cared in the way he nearly broke the bedframe, pinning Lex between his hands and the mattress. He gets carried away, doesn't know his own strength, he whispers a long, frantic string of apologies as Lex fears his ribs might crack beneath this stone giant, but he doesn't care. He only wants this, the feeling of crumbling, that if Clark doesn't break him he'll never be strong enough...  
  
Lex opens his eyes to find himself splayed out on the tile floor. He notices how the purple of the tiles brings out the bruises more. He smiles at his favorite, the red-purple blush of a handprint on his thigh, the most recent addition to his morbid collection. He traces the outline and again, the memory fills him...

_"I don't know why you like purple, Lex. It's such a girly color," Clark, lying draped across Lex's canopy bed, strokes a velvet curtain._

"That's not purple, that's eggplant. Honestly, Clark, you have no taste. Don't you know purple is the color of power? The ancient Greeks made the dye by squeezing a certain kind of shellfish, and since the process was so expensive, only the Royalty could afford it," Lex traced the lines of Clark Kent with his hungry eyes-- his greek statue, his flawless, bronzed David.

"That's gross. Shellfish?" Clark quickly withdrew his hand from the curtain and wiped imaginary shellfish juice onto the silk sheets. Lex caught his hand.

"Relax, Clark, that was ages ago. Now it's made synthetically or from reeds in India." He licked Clark's fingers languidly.

Later, as a joke, Clark would call him "His Purple People Eater", and in private conversations, the nickname stuck.

Lex smirks sardonically. Purple People Eater indeed. He would have to work on Clark, on his smooth indifference and his lack of culture. Purple, girly?

He traces around the edges of each line of bruises on his hips, the spattering of sickly purple-yellow that he knows will fade in time, like the others did. But more bruises will replace them, he could count on that. As long as there was Clark Kent, there would be bruises on Lex Luthor. As Lex's fingers sigh over the freshest bruise again, bright red-purple like a plum, Lex knows he awaits the next flourid purple fingerprints to mark the pale canvas of his body.

After all, purple is his favorite color.


End file.
